


to make something out of nothing, sounds like someone else i know

by strikethesun



Category: Frankenstein - Mary Shelley, Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: ACAB, M/M, Power Dynamics, Thinly-veiled references to current events, javert's writing is not super great On Purpose, knowledge of both canons recommended, something something "society makes its OWN monsters..."
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:47:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26547007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikethesun/pseuds/strikethesun
Summary: For the promptfrankenstein au!!!! idk any of the specifics or how it would work exactly but i just think it would be fun.Title from Father John Misty's "When the God of Love Returns There'll Be Hell to Pay."
Relationships: Javert/Jean Valjean
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12
Collections: Sewerchat Anniversary Exchange 2020





	to make something out of nothing, sounds like someone else i know

**Author's Note:**

  * For [onegaymore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/onegaymore/gifts).



I wiped the sweat off my brow and took a step away from my work.

The  _ creature _ lay there before me, mottled and...and otherwise utterly indescribable. 

valjean looked up from the leather-bound journal. “javert, you’ve got to try a little harder than  _ that.  _ and what’s up with the italics on ‘creature’? it makes me sound scarier than i think i deserve.”

javert spun around, away from the window that overlooked the dirty street below. he had always hated standing around while others read his work, even when that work had consisted purely of criminal records and patrol reports, so the muted drama unfolding between two street peddlers had become suddenly quite fascinating instead. javert was met with a surprisingly hurt expression on valjean’s face—that face that he still couldn’t comprehend or describe or  _ explain _ the feelings it awoke in him. “i apologize, dear. i’ll fix that later.”

valjean’s cloudy eyes softened and twinkled. “don’t worry too much about it, i’m nitpicking just a little. but those little choices  _ do _ matter. you and i know better than anyone how much of a difference is made in…” he struggled to find the word. “framing,” he eventually settled on. “framing  _ you  _ and framing  _ me.” _

__ valjean was right, as he tended to be; the last couple years had served as a masterclass in the power of perception for both of them. for valjean, it had been a masterclass in  _ everything,  _ javert supposed, since the man sitting in front of him had simply not existed before two winters ago. in retrospect, he wished he had taken better notes—the journal that he kept at the time of his experiments was cold and scientific. it repulsed him now, the way he so effortlessly described the body that would become the man he loved more than all the world as an object. he had burned that first journal shortly after taking up residence with valjean. he couldn’t stand to let that part of himself live, the uncaring scientist utterly absent from the world. soon, he had begun to wonder if that part hadn’t corrupted all the rest—hadn’t he seen  _ the common criminal  _ as an object too, after abandoning his scalpels and flasks for a badge and a baton? but the creation had not only caught up with the creator, but had surpassed him in grace, and forgiveness, and in  _ love _ . one night, javert had opened up the window and pondered the street below, nearly calculating the distance to the ground and the effect those cobblestones would have on the frail human form before being held and rocked slowly from behind.  _ if a wretched thing like me can love and be loved, then so can a man like you.  _

javert turned back to the window as those words bounced around his mind. valjean had taken his silence as affirmation and returned to the journal.

So horrified was I by the ghastly visage of my own creation that I ran from the room and hid. I heard only his guttural, unearthly moans and the sound of his heavy feet hitting the floor before losing consciousness. When I awoke, he had vanished. 

valjean had heard all of this before, but he had heard it from a javert on his knees, sobbing silently, begging for forgiveness. he wanted to hear it from a javert in his right mind, who could stand on his own two feet and look him in the eye.  _ well, at least he’s standing.  _ valjean had no clear memories himself of the early part of this narrative, nothing more than pain—his eyes forced to adjust to broad daylight, every sound as loud as thunder inside his head, the literal sticks and stones that chased him out of town, cold and heat equally fresh on his translucent skin. but now he could trace over the pain that javert had experienced at the same time, fear and abandonment and guilt.

Several months passed before I received any word about the status of my creation. All that time, I was forced to pray day and night that I was mistaken in interpreting the look in those eyes as inherently wicked and cruel, and all I desired was to know for certain that I had not brought evil into this world, which would have been an impossible grief to endure. When I heard the news, then, of a monster which roamed the forests and had robbed a young boy blind, harming him in the process, there was only one path left open to me: to hunt this monster down. There was no doubt in my mind that the monster was my own; looking back, I cannot say why this was, but it was an absolute certainty in my mind, as fixed as the one that had convinced me to attempt to override life and death in the first place.

valjean turned the page, expecting elaboration on how javert had become attached to the police force, but he was met with blank paper. “oh, is this as far as you’ve gotten so far?”

javert frowned. “no, i’ve finished.”

valjean’s brow furrowed. “surely there’s more to your story than this?”

“flip a couple more pages.”

valjean did so, and javert’s neat handwriting picked right back up several pages later at the moment he had become a patrolman. “i don’t understand.”

“isn’t there an important part of the story that isn’t mine to tell?”

valjean’s face lit up in recognition. “you mean…”

javert studied his boots. “you don’t have to do it right now, of course. but i want you to tell your part in these events. this... _ document  _ would be incomplete without it.”

valjean smiled. “i’ll see what i can do. let me finish reading your story first, though.”

As I felt the burden of stopping this creature was mine and mine alone, owing to the fact that the creature itself was mine and mine alone, I abandoned my studies at once and worked my way into becoming a man of the law. After only a few months, I was entrusted with my first patrol. It did not cover the area of the forest where my creature had been reported, not yet, but first I needed to gain the trust and confidence of my superiors. So I began to hunt. I hunted criminals: petty thieves, the homeless, vagabonds, itinerants. The town I patrolled was small and quiet, but I always found crime once I began to look for it. The irony of this did not strike me at the time; as in my scientific pursuits, I was ignorant to everything outside of my work. From my present perspective, however, my heart having been softened by events that will be elucidated in the pages to come, I can see the error of my ways. The “criminals” that I rounded up each week were almost exclusively the poor and needy. It would have been within my power, and the power of the force I worked on, to fulfill these people’s needs in such a way to prevent further crime. The francs spent on uniforms and batons and rich furniture for our superiors could have been spent on ensuring that thieves would have no reason to steal, but instead, I arrested them and locked them away. When they returned to society, they returned even poorer and angrier than they had been beforehand. 

valjean nodded silently and flipped past another set of blank pages.

Only recently did I realize that my creature had undergone the same process. When I brought  it him into the world and abandoned him immediately after, like the most despicable sort of creator, I made him into a monster. He had only known the cruelty of strangers who could not comprehend his appearance, and he robbed others because he had been robbed of the few possessions he had managed to get ahold of himself—one of my coats, bread left out in the street, apples from an unattended orchard—all had been taken from him in turn by highwaymen. Besides, who was there to teach him that stealing was inhumane? Who was there to teach him what crimes were, and why one should not commit them, and what both the love and wrath of God felt like? God had not brought him into the world, and was therefore not responsible for his protection;  _ I  _ was, and I failed most miserably. I am still attempting to atone for this crime, this crime that is worse than any committed by either my creature or any of the men and women and children whom I arrested.

the sets of blank pages began to pop up more frequently in valjean’s frame of vision. the anticipation starting to get to him and, after looking up to make sure that javert wouldn’t notice, he flipped ahead towards the end. 

The mayor turned to me and wordlessly began unbuttoning his shirt. What I saw writ across his chest was worse than anything I could possibly have imagined; it was my own work. My own stitches, placed by hand, barely healed due to the lack of life in the flesh that they sat in. This revelation was so horrible that I lost consciousness for several hours, and when I awoke, the mayor—my creature—was tending to me almost lovingly. He and I had become quite close over the course of the past few months, so I failed to see anything odd about this arrangement at the moment of awakening. However, once I remembered what I had witnessed, I was struck by the memory of that creature’s watery eyes; how they had followed me around my old laboratory. Yes, those eyes in front of me were the same eyes that had haunted both my nightmares and waking moments for several years. 

at the next blank page, valjean tried to imagine what he would write—how could he contain the emotion of their first true meeting in words? javert had stumbled over his words at first:  _ how...how do you look so normal? like any other man?  _ and valjean had smiled, as kindly as possible, and wiped more sweat away from javert’s pale brow.  _ i was shown mercy. a bishop in the woods. he...showed me how to be a man. and it worked. it fooled you, didn’t it?  _

_ “yes, undoubtedly,” javert breathed. “but when i look at you like...this, i can clearly see that you look no different. i don’t get it.”  _

__ _ valjean sighed. “i’m not sure i fully get it myself, but...people see in me what they want to see, inspector. at first, everyone saw a monster, because they couldn’t comprehend me. but i was really just a blank slate, you know? a _ tabula rasa _. i don’t hold any resentment towards those early encounters anymore. the people who chased me out of their towns were scared, and had every reason to be: the world isn’t a kind place to most of its residents. i’ve tried to be as fair a mayor as possible, but what can i do in the face of a poverty that covers this whole nation, this whole world, like...like a funeral shroud? i don’t think those people were justified in causing me pain, but i’ve now seen their suffering firsthand. and i became a lot like them, for a time: i stole, i fought to stay alive, i didn’t trust a soul. but then that bishop saved me.” a broad smile made the corners of his eyes crinkle in such a way that the stitches right next to them seemed to disappear; javert was beginning to understand how he failed to recognize his own creation for months. “he saved me from arrest, gave me food, shelter, money. i don’t know what he saw when he looked at me, but since then, i’ve apparently seemed human to virtually everyone i’ve met. it happened somewhat gradually; my first employers thought i was deathly ill. but it seems that i’ve fully fooled even the one i thought would be hardest to fool of all.” _

__ _ javert shuddered. “did you know who i was right away?” _

__ _ “no,” said valjean. “i thought you were vaguely familiar, but that was all for the first month or so. it wasn’t until i looked back at some of my earliest possessions and noticed your name sewn into a coat that i realized what, exactly, your ‘scientific background’ meant.” _

__ javert clearing his throat snapped valjean out of his reverie. “are you...happy with it so far?”

valjean set the book down and walked over to the window. “javert, i love it. you’ve made a lot of progress, and i’m proud of you.”

javert swallowed a laugh. “admiring your... _ creation _ , are you?”

valjean planted a kiss on javert’s lips—this still took javert aback each time, but he hoped that it one day wouldn’t, because it was the only thing he was certain he wanted to do for the rest of his life. “constantly.” 


End file.
